Jun

17

The bottom line is our society does not yet provide women in the workplace with the type of social supports, like high-quality subsidized child care or extended parental leave, that allows them to fully go for it, and the impact this has on the scope and depth of a career is profound. Right or wrong, men plunge into their careers without much thought about how they’ll navigate the work/family balance. They assume someone — spouse, parent, paid caregiver — will materialize to take care of it (and usually someone does.) This one assumption opens up an entire world of possibility to a young person in a way that can’t be overstated.

This may be one of the most cogent explanations that I’ve read anywhere about why there are ‘so few women’ in just about any field. Can you guess who said it? The answer is after the jump.

And the answer is… Tom Colicchio, in musing about why there are so few women in the top echelons of his profession. According to Colicchio, the top chefs LIKE to hire women because:

they work hard without any of the competitive, macho bulls**t you often see among their male counterparts. The women I’ve hired help each other, don’t jockey for position, and work until they drop.